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CORDIS

Distributed System of Scientific Collections - Preparatory Phase Project

Project description

The digital unification of Europe’s natural science assets

The Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) represents the largest ever formal agreement between natural history museums, botanical gardens and collection-holding universities in the world. It is a new research infrastructure (RI) for natural science collections and works for the digital unification of all European natural science assets under common curation and access policies and practices. To ensure the data are easily findable, more accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR), DiSSCo enables the transformation of a fragmented landscape of the crucial natural science collections into an integrated knowledge base that provides interconnected hard evidence on the natural world. The EU-funded DiSSCo Prepare project will bring together 31 partner organisations to improve the readiness level and deliver the DiSSCo Construction Masterplan. This masterplan will serve as an organisational, financial and technical guiding framework.

Objective

With 115 organisations across 21 European countries, The Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) represents today the largest ever formal agreement between organisations of this type, in the world. These organisations have joined forces to develop and operate as a distributed pan-European Research Infrastructure. The DiSSCo RI works for the digital unification of all European natural science assets under common curation and access policies and practices that aim to make the data easily Findable, more Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). DiSSCo will deploy a comprehensive portfolio of services across three main categories: a) e-Science Services, b) Physical and Remote Access Services and c) Support and Training Services.

DiSSCo Prepare acts as the main vehicle through which DiSSCo RI will raise its overall maturity and set itself in a position to implement its construction programme. DiSSCo Prepare aims at 1) improving the overall Implementation Readiness Level (IRL), and 2) delivering the DiSSCo Construction Masterplan.

The DiSSCo IRL is defined as the measure of the ability to embark on specific implementation actions (construction projects) based on clear, actionable guidelines with minimum risk, and across the scientific, data, financial, technological and organisational dimensions of the infrastructure. DiSSCo Prepare will raise the readiness level of the RI across all five dimensions. The DiSSCo Construction Masterplan will be considered as the final output of the project and will effectively be used as the organisational, financial and technical guiding framework for the construction of the infrastructure (including establishing the legal entity).

Fields of science

Call for proposal

H2020-INFRADEV-2018-2020

See other projects for this call

Sub call

H2020-INFRADEV-2019-2

Coordinator

STICHTING NATURALIS BIODIVERSITY CENTER
Net EU contribution
€ 593 150,86
Address
DARWINWEG 2
2333 CR Leiden
Netherlands

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Region
West-Nederland Zuid-Holland Agglomeratie Leiden en Bollenstreek
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost
€ 722 760,55

Participants (33)